During a pro-Palestine protest at Emory University, two professors were detained and 28 protesters were arrested, including 20 Emory community members, CNN reported Thursday.
Those detained by Georgia state police included economics professor Caroline Fohlin and the chair of the school’s philosophy department, Noëlle McAfee.
During her interaction with police, filmed by CNN, Fohlin could be heard expressing concern about violent arrests and the use of force by police against individuals she identified as students. Troopers used Tasers and fired pepper balls at protesters “to control” what law enforcement described as an “unruly crowd.”
Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, a Republican, defended efforts to clear campuses of protesters. He wrote on X that he “proudly” supported actions taken by universities that would “protect the health and safety of Georgia’s students.”
“Nobody has the legal right to shut down our schools by camping out and making antisemitic threats,” he said.
But Democratic Georgia state lawmakers are condemning the “excessive force used by Georgia State Patrol” seen at Emory. The use of “extreme anti-riot tactics” is not safe and “is a dangerous escalation to protests which were by all accounts peaceful and nonviolent,” read a statement signed by 11 Democrats and posted on X by Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American.